“Amour” takes U.S. film critics’ top prize as best film

NEW YORK (Reuters) – “Amour,” European director Michael Haneke‘s sensitive depiction of an aging couple’s battle with declining health, was named the year’s best film by the National Society of Film Critics on Saturday, with star Emmanuelle Riva winning best actress and Haneke taking the prize for best director.

The group, made up of 60 prominent movie critics from newspapers, magazines and other media outlets nationwide, chose Daniel Day-Lewis as best actor for his acclaimed performance in the title role in “Lincoln.”

Best supporting actor went to Matthew McConaughey for the male stripper film “Magic Mike,” while Amy Adams won best supporting actress for “The Master.”

In choosing “Amour” for its top prize, the critics were more in line with European honors such as the Cannes Film Festival which awarded it the Palme D’Or, than with earlier U.S. awards, many of which went to presumed Oscar frontrunner “Zero Dark Thirty.”

In the film, Riva plays a woman who suffers a stroke, challenging her and her husband, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, who becomes her caretaker. Isabelle Huppert plays the couple’s daughter.

The stars are among France’s most revered actors, while German-born Haneke has been honored for many previous films such as “The White Ribbon” and “The Piano Teacher,” with a canon that often hews more towards the bleak, brutal and disturbing than the overtly sensitive.

In other awards, the critics gave the nonfiction, or documentary prize, to “The Gatekeepers,” which looks at the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, while Tony Kushner won best screenplay for “Lincoln.” Best cinematography went to “The Master.”

“This Is Not a Film” took the experimental film prize, while the critics gave two special film heritage honors to Laurence Kardish, senior film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and to Milestone Film and Video for its ongoing Shirley Clarke project.

The critics’ awards are among the last handed out in the run-up to the Oscar nominations, which will be announced on Thursday in Los Angeles, with the Academy Awards gala slated for February 24.

“Amour” is Austria’s official submission for the best foreign language film category.

(Editing by Chris Michaud)

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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

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Preoccupations: Teaching Meditation Techniques to Organizations

IN 1972, I was a 30-year-old American traveling in India, with the smell of incense in my hair and mantras repeating in my ears. Back then, if you had told me that I would someday be training employees of corporate America to apply contemplative practices to help them become more successful, I would have said you’d been standing too long in India’s hot noonday sun.

Nancy Palmieri for The New York Times

Mirabai Bush is a co-founder and senior fellow at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, which offers meditation techniques to organizations.

Yet not long ago, I was standing in front of employees at Google in Mountain View, Calif. They were dutifully following my instructions to feel the sensations of their breath as it passed in and out of their nostrils, and learning how to send e-mail mindfully, by taking three deep breaths before hitting “send.”

I am a co-founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a nonprofit organization that is now 16 years old, and we have undertaken a daunting task: to convince people in their workplaces that the simple meditation techniques developed 2,500 years ago by the Buddha might help increase productivity, reduce absenteeism and inspire greater creativity. We have introduced contemplative exercises that can reduce stress and heart rate and increase attention and awareness of self and others. We teach what we call “mindful listening,” so that a speaker is fully heard.

For our first project, we chose a large corporation in the Midwest whose C.E.O. knew one of our board members. We created a three-day, mostly silent retreat off site.

I encountered workers who were exhausted, overworked and stressed. They were curious whether these practices could help, but also skeptical. Before the retreat, several people said, in effect: “Stress got me where I am. I don’t want to lose my edge.”

I thought to myself: This won’t be easy; maybe they won’t even attend.

But they all showed up. First, I asked them to lie on the floor for a deep-relaxation exercise. They didn’t balk; instead, they followed my instructions to let go and relax their bodies. We also introduced mindfulness meditation, which we believe builds attention and insight and helps people become more kind and loving. We taught the practice of bringing our minds to our breath, noticing our breath, and returning to our breath each time the mind wanders off — a task that’s tougher than it sounds.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said the C.E.O., who had a brilliant mind and thousands of employees. But the participants learned how to bring their minds to a place that was calm and clear, a great place to begin thinking and making decisions. When it was over, all felt that it was helpful.

SINCE that first foray into the corporate world, we have worked with many other organizations. For a small group, we have had a big reach, working with high-profile organizations like Yale Law School, Hearst Publications and the Army. We’ve offered programs as diverse as one-hour introductions, four-day intensive retreats, and courses with six weekly sessions.

At first, resistance was everywhere, but so were the possibilities. A litigation lawyer thought that if he became more compassionate toward the opposition in his cases, he couldn’t be a zealous advocate for clients. But he found that being calm, clear and compassionate gave him better insights and better timing.

An environmental leader thought that if others knew he practiced meditation, they wouldn’t take him seriously — and would write him off as a tree-hugger without scientific rigor. Instead, he found that he became more resilient, and less overwhelmed by climate-change predictions, and that he collaborated better with colleagues.

Magazine editors thought that they would miss deadlines; in fact, they learned to focus on priorities and work better in teams to meet the deadlines in new ways. Data-driven Google engineers questioned the value of developing capacities that can’t be quantified, but many of them learned better ways to communicate. One engineer told me his wife had noticed a change in the way he listened to her. She asked him: “What happened to you?”

As we continue exploring the benefits of mindfulness for work, scientists are researching the effects of the practices on the brain. Neuroscientists have confirmed much of what we were experiencing: that meditation improves attention, reduces stress hormones, increases appreciation and compassion for others and helps us recover faster from negative information.

Personally, this work has made me feel more connected to the world. Watching the responses of so many people — from an economics professor to Army soldiers — I’ve come to believe that it’s a basic human need to be calm and clear, to be aware of ourselves and others, to be kind and collaborative, to be fully present in each moment.

It turns out that people work better when they are happy and feel aligned with their work. I know I do.

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Legislators vow to change law on rape by impersonation

California legislators and the state's top prosecutor said Friday that they would work to overhaul a law that makes it a crime to obtain sex by impersonating another only if the victim is a married woman.

The 19th century law required a state appeals court on Wednesday to overturn the rape conviction of a Los Angeles County man who entered a darkened bedroom where a woman was sleeping and had sex with her.

The 18-year-old woman said she initially mistook the defendant for her boyfriend, who had left earlier, but resisted when she realized it wasn't him. Police said the defendant admitted the woman probably wrongly assumed he was her boyfriend.

The Los Angeles-based 2nd District Court of Appeal said it had ruled reluctantly and appealed to the Legislature to change the law. Another court also put the Legislature on notice of the law's anomaly 30 years ago, but legislators failed to act.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) said changing the law would be a top priority for the lower house in this year's legislative session.

"We've got to fix this," said Pérez, who has authored proposals to address similar legal loopholes for victims of domestic violence. "The goal here is to make sure we have a set of laws that are consistent with what our values are."

Assemblyman K.H. "Katcho" Achadjian (R-San Luis Obispo) said prosecutors in Santa Barbara asked him to change the law in 2011 because of their difficulty in prosecuting a man for rape.

But his bill to overhaul the law died in the state Senate Public Safety Committee. Lawmakers said they were following a policy to shelve legislation that could exacerbate the state's prison overcrowding crisis by creating new felonies.

The current law says sex by trickery is rape only if the victim is married and the man pretends to be her husband.

Legal analysts said Wednesday's unanimous ruling by three Republican-appointed justices, two men and one woman, applied the law correctly.

"Californians are justifiably outraged by this court ruling, and it is important that the Legislature join together to close whatever loopholes may exist in the law and uphold justice for rape victims," Achadjian said Friday.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) said she would join Achadjian in introducing a new bill that would expand the definition of rape to include those impersonating the victim's boyfriend, fiance or significant other.

"The current definition in state law is a relic from the 1870s," Lowenthal said. "Allowing this to stand in the 21st century would be like applying horse and buggy standards to our freeways."

State Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also vowed to act.

"Having sex with an unconscious person is rape. Period," she said.

Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris said the Los Angeles case clearly involved a "non-consensual assault that fits within the general understanding of what constitutes rape.

"This law is arcane, and I will work with the Legislature to fix it," she said in a statement issued to reporters.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

michael.mishak@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 5

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

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Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Al Pacino inhabits Phil Spector in Mamet’s HBO film

PASADENA, California (Reuters) – Playwright David Mamet had little interest in legendary music producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector, dismissing him as a “freak” – until he watched a documentary that shed light on a complicated personality.

Now, the “Glengarry Glen Ross” writer is bringing to HBO a movie inspired by Spector’s life that imagines his relationship with the attorney who defended him against charges of killing actress Lana Clarkson in Los Angeles in 2003.

The film, “Phil Spector,” written and directed by Mamet, stars Al Pacino as the music producer and Helen Mirren as his attorney.

When Mamet’s agent urged him to watch a documentary about Spector, the playwright said he felt he already knew enough about the eccentric producer who sported wild hair and was found guilty of murder.

“You start out saying this guy’s a freak,” Mamet told reporters at a Television Critics Association meeting on Friday.

Learning more about Spector, “you start to think, how could I be so prejudiced? The guy sounds brilliant.”

“Then you say, maybe he’s not guilty,” Mamet said.

In the TV film that debuts March 24 on Time Warner Inc-owned HBO, Mirren plays Linda Kenney Baden, who defended Spector in his first murder trial that ended in a mistrial with jurors deadlocked. He was convicted in a second trial in 2009 and is serving a sentence of 19 years to life.

Spector, now 73, revolutionized pop music in the 1960s with his layered “Wall of Sound” production techniques, working with the Beatles, the Ronettes, Cher and Leonard Cohen at the height of his fame. But for years before the trial, he had lived as a virtual recluse in a mock castle in suburban Los Angeles.

WORK OF FICTION

The HBO film starts with a disclaimer saying it is a work of fiction “inspired by actual persons in a trial, but it is neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor to comment upon the outcome.”

It tells how Baden became intrigued by Spector and the challenges of defending him. She considers how to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury while the defense team wrestles with whether Spector should take the stand.

As his attorneys consider that Spector might hurt his own cause, Spector reminds them of his accomplishments. In one scene, he tells Baden: “The first time you got felt up, guess what? You were listening to one of my songs.”

The real-life Baden told reporters on Friday that, as Spector’s attorney, she couldn’t tell Mamet about any conversations with her client. Instead, they were left to the playwright’s imagination.

Baden said she felt the forensic evidence against Spector did not prove he killed Clarkson, who was found shot to death in the foyer of Spector’s home hours after the pair met in a nightclub. Spector denied murdering Clarkson but did not testify at either trial.

Pacino said he didn’t try to perfectly mimic the real-life music producer or meet with him, though he did watch video footage of his statements around the time of the murder trial.

“I would sit for hours just looking at Phil talking about things,” said Pacino, speaking via satellite from New York.

Mirren said on Friday her biggest challenge was finding the right tone to play a character in the unconventional world that Spector seemed to inhabit.

“It’s like a strange dream you are having,” Mirren said. “The nature of Phil Spector and the life that he lived encouraged that. He seemed to live in a permanent dream.”

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine, editing by Jill Serjeant and Philip Barbara)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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F.D.A. Offers Rules to Stop Food Contamination

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed two sweeping rules aimed at preventing the contamination of produce and processed foods, which has sickened tens of thousands of Americans annually in recent years.

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Checking the temperature of lettuce at an Arizona farm. Safety measures would start at farms.

The proposed rules represent a sea change in the way the agency polices food, a process that currently involves taking action after contamination has been identified. It is a long-awaited step toward codifying the food safety law that Congress passed two years ago.

Changes include requirements for better record keeping, contingency plans for handling outbreaks and measures that would prevent the spread of contaminants in the first place. While food producers would have latitude in determining how to execute the rules, farmers would have to ensure that water used in irrigation met certain standards and food processors would need to find ways to keep fresh food that may contain bacteria from coming into contact with food that has been cooked.

New safety measures might include requiring that farm workers wash their hands, installing portable toilets in fields and ensuring that foods are cooked at temperatures high enough to kill bacteria.

Whether consumers will ultimately bear some of the expense of the new rules was unclear, but the agency estimated that the proposals would cost food producers tens of thousands of dollars a year.

A big question to be resolved is whether Congress will approve the money necessary to support the oversight. President Obama requested $220 million in his 2013 budget, but Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the F.D.A., said “resources remain an ongoing concern.”

Nonetheless, agency officials were optimistic that the new rules would protect consumers better.

“These new rules really set the basic framework for a modern, science-based approach to food safety and shift us from a strategy of reacting to problems to a strategy for preventing problems,” Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, said in an interview. The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the safety of about 80 percent of the food that Americans consume. The rest falls to the Agriculture Department, which is responsible for meat, poultry and some eggs.

One in six Americans becomes ill from eating contaminated food each year, the government estimates; most of them recover without concern, but roughly 130,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die. The agency estimated the new rules could prevent about 1.75 million illnesses each year.

Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2010 after a wave of incidents involving tainted eggs, peanut butter and spinach sickened thousands of people and led major food makers to join consumer advocates in demanding stronger government oversight.

But it took the Obama administration two years to move the rules through the regulatory agency, prompting complaints that the White House was more concerned about protecting itself from Republican criticism than about public safety.

Mr. Taylor said that the delay was a function of the wide variety of foods and the complexity of the food system. “Anything that is important and complicated will always take longer than you would like,” he said.

The first rule would require manufacturers of processed foods sold in the United States to come up with ways to reduce the risk of contamination. Food companies would be required to have a plan for correcting problems and for keeping records that government inspectors could audit.

An example might be to require the roasting of raw peanuts at a temperature guaranteed to kill salmonella, which has been a problem in nut butters in recent years. Roasted nuts would then have to be kept separate from raw nuts to further reduce the risk of contamination, said Sandra B. Eskin, director of the safe food campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“This is very good news for consumers,” Ms. Eskin said. “We applaud the administration’s action, which demonstrates its strong commitment to making our food safer.”

The second rule would apply to the harvesting and production of fruits and vegetables in an effort to combat bacterial contamination like E. coli, which is transmitted through feces. It would address what advocates refer to as the “four Ws” — water, waste, workers and wildlife.

Read More..

F.D.A. Offers Rules to Stop Food Contamination

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed two sweeping rules aimed at preventing the contamination of produce and processed foods, which has sickened tens of thousands of Americans annually in recent years.

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Checking the temperature of lettuce at an Arizona farm. Safety measures would start at farms.

The proposed rules represent a sea change in the way the agency polices food, a process that currently involves taking action after contamination has been identified. It is a long-awaited step toward codifying the food safety law that Congress passed two years ago.

Changes include requirements for better record keeping, contingency plans for handling outbreaks and measures that would prevent the spread of contaminants in the first place. While food producers would have latitude in determining how to execute the rules, farmers would have to ensure that water used in irrigation met certain standards and food processors would need to find ways to keep fresh food that may contain bacteria from coming into contact with food that has been cooked.

New safety measures might include requiring that farm workers wash their hands, installing portable toilets in fields and ensuring that foods are cooked at temperatures high enough to kill bacteria.

Whether consumers will ultimately bear some of the expense of the new rules was unclear, but the agency estimated that the proposals would cost food producers tens of thousands of dollars a year.

A big question to be resolved is whether Congress will approve the money necessary to support the oversight. President Obama requested $220 million in his 2013 budget, but Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the F.D.A., said “resources remain an ongoing concern.”

Nonetheless, agency officials were optimistic that the new rules would protect consumers better.

“These new rules really set the basic framework for a modern, science-based approach to food safety and shift us from a strategy of reacting to problems to a strategy for preventing problems,” Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, said in an interview. The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the safety of about 80 percent of the food that Americans consume. The rest falls to the Agriculture Department, which is responsible for meat, poultry and some eggs.

One in six Americans becomes ill from eating contaminated food each year, the government estimates; most of them recover without concern, but roughly 130,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die. The agency estimated the new rules could prevent about 1.75 million illnesses each year.

Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2010 after a wave of incidents involving tainted eggs, peanut butter and spinach sickened thousands of people and led major food makers to join consumer advocates in demanding stronger government oversight.

But it took the Obama administration two years to move the rules through the regulatory agency, prompting complaints that the White House was more concerned about protecting itself from Republican criticism than about public safety.

Mr. Taylor said that the delay was a function of the wide variety of foods and the complexity of the food system. “Anything that is important and complicated will always take longer than you would like,” he said.

The first rule would require manufacturers of processed foods sold in the United States to come up with ways to reduce the risk of contamination. Food companies would be required to have a plan for correcting problems and for keeping records that government inspectors could audit.

An example might be to require the roasting of raw peanuts at a temperature guaranteed to kill salmonella, which has been a problem in nut butters in recent years. Roasted nuts would then have to be kept separate from raw nuts to further reduce the risk of contamination, said Sandra B. Eskin, director of the safe food campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“This is very good news for consumers,” Ms. Eskin said. “We applaud the administration’s action, which demonstrates its strong commitment to making our food safer.”

The second rule would apply to the harvesting and production of fruits and vegetables in an effort to combat bacterial contamination like E. coli, which is transmitted through feces. It would address what advocates refer to as the “four Ws” — water, waste, workers and wildlife.

Read More..

Court voids rape conviction in impersonation ruling

A man who impersonates someone in order to have sexual intercourse may be guilty of rape only if the victim was married and the man was pretending to be her husband, a state appeals court has ruled.

The unanimous ruling, from an admittedly reluctant court, overturned the rape conviction of Julio Morales, who entered a sleeping woman's dark bedroom after her boyfriend walked out and began having intercourse with her. The woman screamed and resisted when she awoke and realized Morales was not her boyfriend, the court said.

"A man enters the dark bedroom of an unmarried woman after seeing her boyfriend leave late at night, and has sexual intercourse with the woman while pretending to be the boyfriend," the Los Angeles-based 2nd District Court of Appeal said in Wednesday's ruling. "Has the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no, even though, if the woman had been married and the man had impersonated her husband, the answer would be yes."

The court urged the Legislature to change the archaic law to "correct the incongruity that exists when a man may commit rape … when impersonating a husband, but not when impersonating a boyfriend."

The justices noted that prosecutors advanced two legal theories — that the defendant raped by tricking the victim, which applies only to married women, and that he committed rape by having sex with a sleeping person.

Because it was unclear under which theory the jury convicted Morales, the court overturned the conviction. If Los Angeles prosecutors retry Morales, they may prevail only under the sleeping person theory and only if they prove Morales knew the woman was sleeping when he had sex with her, the court said.

Los Angeles prosecutors said they were reviewing the ruling Thursday and had not decided whether to retry Morales or appeal to the California Supreme Court. A spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris said her office was also studying the decision and had no immediate comment.

An attorney for Morales said the appeals court decision was legally correct and speculated that the Legislature might change the law as a result.

Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen called the ruling "bizarre" and likely to spark outrage, but predicted that the California Supreme Court would probably not review it because it was legally sound.

"I think the ball is in the Legislature's court," he said.

Uelmen said he found it "ironic" that a judge had spotted the anomaly in the law 30 years ago, yet the Legislature failed to change it. The ruling indicated there was "pretty solid" evidence the woman was sleeping during the sex, "so this guy isn't going to get off scot free," the law professor said.

The appeals court relied on a criminal code enacted in 1872 that defined rape as an act of sexual intercourse "with a female not the wife of the perpetrator."

The law was amended a couple of years later to specify that such sex would be rape if the victim "submits, under the belief that the person committing the act is her husband, and this belief is induced by any artifice, pretense, or concealment practiced by the accused."

Wednesday's ruling was written by Justice Thomas L. Willhite Jr., appointed to the appeals court by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, joined by Justices Norman L. Epstein, appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian, and Justice Nora M. Manella, another Schwarzenegger appointee.

"We reluctantly hold that a person who accomplishes sexual intercourse by impersonating someone other than a married victim's spouse is not guilty of the crime of rape of an unconscious person," Willhite wrote in the precedent-setting decision.

The alleged rape occurred in February 2009, when an 18-year-old woman went to a party with her boyfriend. The woman's brother and his friends, including Morales, also attended.

All of them returned to the woman's house. She and her boyfriend went to bed but did not have sex. She fell asleep and the boyfriend left.

She said she woke up and realized that the man with her was not her boyfriend and began to yell and cry. Morales left, and she said she locked the door and called her boyfriend. He summoned police.

A sheriff's deputy said Morales admitted that the woman might have been asleep and probably thought he was her boyfriend.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Times staff writer Lee Romney contributed to this report.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 4

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

Read More..